How To Change The Post Author In WordPress

Sometimes, there are situations where you may need to change the author displayed for one or more of your WordPress posts.

For example:

You could have posts where the author has been assigned as “admin” or “guest author”, or another username that you don’t want as the publicly displayed username associated with those posts.

Where you allow multiple authors on your WordPress site, there may be occasions or circumstances where you may need to assign one or more posts to a different user than the one currently assigned as their author.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to change the author assigned to one or more posts by changing either one post at a time or using the “Bulk Actions” function for posts or pages.

Watch the video below, or complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn how to change the post author in WordPress …

How To Change The Post Author In WordPress – Step-By-Step Tutorial

1 – Changing The Display Name On All Your Posts

Let’s say that you want to change the name being displayed on all of the posts you have written to something else.

So, for example, all of your posts look like this …

But you want to change it to this …

If you want to change the author name displayed on all of your own posts to something else, then all you have to do is change your public display name (nickname) in your User Profile settings.

You can get to your Profile screen a number of ways:

You can log into your WP Admin area and click on Users > All Users …

Next, place your mouse over your User profile and click Edit …

You can also click on Users > Your Profile from the WP admin menu …

Finally, you can also click on the “Howdy, Your Site Name” tab at the very top right hand corner of your administration screen toolbar and select Edit My Profile

In the “Profile” screen, (1) change the name in the Nickname field to whatever name you want to display as your new post author, and then (2) select the new nickname you’ve just created from the drop-down menu in the Display name publicly as field …

Click the Update Profile button to save your settings …

Your profile will now be updated with the new “nickname” you have selected …

Go back to your Table of Posts and you should see that all of your posts are now displayed using your new nickname …

Tip: Use this method to change the name associated with your posts if you were assigned the username “admin” when you WordPress site was originally installed …

2 – Assigning Post Authors To Different Users

If you allow multiple users on your WordPress site, then you can assign post authors to different users as follows:

First, make sure that whoever you want to assign as the new author of the posts is a registered user of your site, has a User Profile already set up, and has been assigned a role other than “Subscriber” (e.g. “Author”).

For more information on setting up new users on your WordPress site and assigning roles and capabilities.

Changing Authors On Multiple Posts At Once

In your Posts screen, select all the posts you want to assign to a different author from the Table of Posts …

Next, (1) Select the author you want to assign the posts to from the Author section drop-down menu, and (2) click Update to update your settings …

Note: if you can’t see the user you want to assign as the new author of your selected posts displayed in the drop-down menu, then check to make sure that you have assigned a role to the user that is above “subscriber”.

The new author name should now be displaying for all the posts you have selected …

Changing Authors On Individual Posts

To change the post author for an individual post, select the post from your Table of Posts and click on Quick Edit …

In the “Quick Edit” screen, (1) Select the author you want to assign the post to from the Author section drop-down menu, and (2) click Update to update your settings …

Your post will now display with the new author …

You can also change the Post author in WordPress while you are creating or editing a post, by scrolling down to the bottom of your Post editor screen and selecting a new post author from the Author drop-down menu …

Tip: If you can’t see the Author section below your post editor, then locate the “Screen Options” section in the top-right hand corner of your “Edit Post” screen …